1. The origins of nomadic
pastoralism in West Africa
Veerle Linseele
Center for Archaeological Sciences – Catholic University Leuven
I have recently finished a doctoral study on faunal remains from about 30
archaeological sites in the West African Sahel, dating roughly between 2000 BC and
the present. One of my research topics was early food production. Questions thereby
arose on the origins of nomadic pastoralism in Africa, and in West Africa in
particular. In what follows I will give a diachronic overview of the stages in the
development of food production in sub-Saharan West Africa. I will especially pay
attention to factors that may have influenced the emergence of nomadic pastoralism in
the region. Because differences in that process in comparison with the Near East are
often highlighted, I will add comparative data from the Near East.
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2. 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1000
BC AD
Africa
Pottery before food production
Livestock before cultivated crops
Near East
In the Near East, the first cultivated crops and the first domestic animals appeared
almost simultaneously among sedentary groups during the 8th millennium BC.
The first pottery followed slightly later.
The oldest possible evidence for food production on the entire African continent
comes from the meanwhile well-known sites Bir Kiseiba and Nabta Playa in the
Egyptian Western desert. At those sites, some large bovid remains were identified
as domestic cattle. The oldest bones may date as far back as the ninth millennium
BC. The remains are part of the arguments used in favour of a local African
domestication of cattle.
Before this earliest form of food production on the African continent, pottery was
already known.
More unequivocal evidence for the presence of domestic animals in Africa dates to
the 7th millennium BC. At that time, domestic ovicaprines arrived from the Near
East and Near Eastern cattle probably also came with them.
By the 4th millennium BC, Near Eastern crops were grown in the Egyptian Nile
Valley. This was possible thanks to the application of an irrigation system, but
ecological circumstances did not allow growing the crops in other parts of Africa.
Apparently, it took until the 2nd millennium BC before local African plants were
being cultivated.
The first African food production is thus in two ways different from that in the Near
East. Firstly, pottery was already known when it emerged, and secondly, livestock
keeping was done long before the first crops were being cultivated.
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3. Place domestication Date domestication
Cat Northeast Africa
2nd mill. BC
and Near East?
Dog East Asia 13000 BC
Horse Ukraine 3500 BC
Donkey Northeast Africa 3500 BC
Pig Near East 7th mill. BC
One-humped camel Arabian Peninsula 3000 BC
Goat and sheep Near East 8th mill. BC
Cattle Near East and
(unhumped) 8th mill. BC
Northeast Africa?
Cattle (humped) Indian subcontinent 8th mill. BC
There are two domestic animals with more certain African origins than cattle.
These are the cat and the donkey. For both the domestication centre is placed in the
Northeast of the continent, but the species are not important food providers.
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4. No large wild animals of sub-Saharan Africa domesticated
Species not suited
None of the Sub-Saharan African larger wild animals was ever domesticated.
Unfortunately for the humans of that region, all species apparently had one or more
characters preventing domestication. Gazelles can for example not be domesticated
because they tend to panic when put in enclosures.
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5. 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1000
BC AD
Early and Middle Holocene climatic optimum
Mobile stock keepers
Sahara
Near East
Because of a climatic optimum during the Early and Middle Holocene, the Sahara had
more lush vegetation at that time than today.
Early stock keepers were able to roam the area. They seem to have had a mobile
lifestyle, and left archaeological traces in the form of hearths, bones of their
animals and rock art.
That rock art testifies that they milked their animals. Milking was possibly done in
Africa from the presence of the earliest livestock onwards.
For the early Saharan herders, domestic stock keeping seems to have been only one of
many ways of getting food. It was added to a hunter-gatherer way of life to
increase the predictive availability of resources.
In the Near East, the earliest livestock keeping is thought to have been practised by
sedentary groups who only used the animals for their meat. In a later stage they
would also have started using milk and other secondary products, like wool. The
timing of this process is not well-known, but milking seems to have been done by
the time the earliest Near Eastern livestock reached Europe.
Also in a later phase after initial animal domestication, the first traces of camps of
mobile groups, tending livestock, have been found. A hypothesis is that they are
seasonal camps of part of a village population that took the fallow herds away.
The productive herds would then have been left near the settlements.
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6. Mobile stock keepers move away after Middle Holocene
After the end of the climatic optimum of the Early and Middle Holocene, herders
could no longer survive in the Sahara and they moved away. There are good
archaeological indications that they migrated southwards and reached the present
Sahel zone of Western Africa by the second millennium BC. For periods before
2000 BC, archaeological evidence in sub-Saharan West Africa is sparse.
The faunal remains I studied were excavated in that Sahel zone of West Africa and
more precisely in northern Burkina Faso and in north-eastern Nigeria near the
shores of Lake Chad. The excavations were done by archaeologists from
Frankfurt, under supervision of Peter Breunig. I had the luck that I could compare
my faunal data with archaeobotanical findings gathered by Katharina Neumann
and her team.
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7. Final Late Stone Age
Burkina Faso
2200-1000 BC
Nigeria
Gajiganna I (1800-1400 BC)
Gajiganna II (1500-800 BC)
West Africa
Earliest food production - regional variation
First agriculture:
• only pearl millet grown
•sedentary lifestyle not necessary
1. In northern Burkina Faso the Late Stone Age occupation only left traces in the form
of small and shallow sites. Archaeobotanical evidence indicates that pearl millet was
grown there at the latest by the end of the period. But, on the other hand, no domestic
species could be found among the faunal remains.
In Nigeria, new ground became available for human settlement in the early second
millennium BC because Lake Chad had began shrinking. The first occupation there
was by people of the so-called Gajiganna Culture. Their sites are larger than those of
Late Stone Age Burkina Faso and often take the shape of settlement mounds.
Domestic cattle and ovicaprines are present from the beginning. In most samples
cattle bones are more numerous than ovicaprines bones. Evidence for cultivated pearl
millet only appears during Gajiganna phase II.
2. The two areas that I have studied illustrate that there has probably been
considerable variation within western Africa during the earliest phases of food
production.
Agriculture during the West African Late Stone Age seems to have been limited to
pearl millet cultivation. Archaeological evidence indicates that it did not require a
fully sedentary lifestyle.
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8. Windé Koroji
MacDonald and MacDonald, 2000 Buffalo
Buffalo
Greatest breadth
Cattle
Greatest length
It is possible that the absence of domestic stock in faunal assemblages of Late Stone
Age Burkina Faso is only a consequence of small sample size. Domestic cattle and
ovicaprines have for example been identified in small numbers at a contemporary
site in a neighbouring part of Mali. But the few measurements that could be taken
on the bones, raise some suspicion concerning the correctness of the
identifications.
Measurements on a bovine first phalanx, for example, fall in the range I obtained for
buffalo instead of cattle. Cattle and buffalo bones can easily be confused.
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9. Iron Age
Burkina Faso
0-AD 1400
Nigeria
0-AD 1600
Already during Gajiganna phase III (600-400 BC) agricultural intensification
West Africa
New crops and new agricultural systems
Full farming required full sedentism
Arrival full farmers: beginning specialisation
Around the beginning of our era, the West African Iron Age set in. New crops, like
sorghum, and new farming systems appeared. The archaeobotanists have marked
it as the beginning of full farming, which now also required full sedentism. The
first domestic animals had apparently also reached northern Burkina Faso by that
time. In the faunal samples of Iron Age sites in both Burkina Faso and Nigeria,
ovicaprines are usually the most abundant domestic species.
It seems that the arrival of full farmers also allowed the beginning of economic
specialisation.
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10. Specialised production is the production of
surpluses for exchange.
By contrast, generalised production is oriented
toward self-sufficiency.
Alchian and Allen, 1969
An economically specialised group concentrates on the production of particular goods,
so that it produces more of these, and less of others, than it consumes itself.
Specialised production is thus the production of surpluses for exchange, as opposed to
generalised production, that is oriented toward self-sufficiency.
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11. Crucial role farmers in development specialisation?
Cf. contemporary specialist groups
(herders, fishers) dependent on
farming neighbours
During the Late Stone Age, food producing economies seem to have been general.
Even though farming did not require full sedentism, it must have limited the degree of
mobility. The arrival of communities of full farmers allowed herders to concentrate on
livestock keeping and increase their mobility because they could now obtain crops by
exchanging them against animal products. In other words, they became more
specialised. Such changes in pastoral economies are also documented
ethnographically. Keeping large herds of domestic stock, and especially cattle requires
mobility because suitable pasture, water and mineral licks are not available year round
near the same spot. Also to avoid the seasonal presence of diseases herders have to
move with their flocks.
The crucial role of farming in economic specialisation is illustrated by the fact that
contemporary specialised herders as well as fishers, are all dependent on farming
neighbours to obtain crops. Cooperation and exchange between different groups made
specialisation possible, but increasing specialisation resulted in a higher
interdependence between those groups.
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12. Other stimulus for development
specialised nomadic pastoralism
Gradual introgression of zebu cattle from first millennium AD
Bifurcated thoracic spine
Probably of zebu
Galaga, Nigeria (19th cent. AD)
The gradual introgression of zebu cattle in West Africa, in the course of the first
millennium AD, probably also influenced the development of specialised nomadic
pastoralism. This type of cattle is better suited for arid environments and long-
distance movements than other cattle types.
Its presence is very difficult to prove from archaeozoological remains. The only
possible evidence for zebu I found is a bifid neural spine of a thoracic vertebra from a
subrecent site in Nigeria.
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13. Even though economic specialisation may have started around the beginning of the
Iron Age, the archaeological record from that period onwards seems to be largely
dominated by the remains of farmers. Their sedentary lifestyle and the large
populations farming can sustain, probably resulted in high archaeological visibility, as
opposed to mobile herders.
I show here two pictures of Iron Age sites in Burkina Faso to illustrate their
prominence in the landscape.
In the fauna, the occupation of the sites by settled farmers is reflected in the
predominance of ovicaprines over cattle. Sheep and goat are less demanding
concerning pasture and watering areas than cattle and can be kept near the homesteads
year round. They are therefore more often associated with sedentary farmers.
That there were indeed pastoral nomadic groups in Sahelian West Africa during the
first millennium AD and later periods is confirmed by historical sources. At some
archaeological sites two size groups of cattle or ovicaprines were found. Judging from
modern parallels, the smaller animals were probably kept by the sedentary groups
themselves, while the larger ones were obtained from pastoral nomadic groups.
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14. 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1000
BC AD
West Africa
Near East
In the Near East, specialised economies probably appeared at the end of the fifth
millennium BC, during the Chalcolithic. They emerged in association with
urbanism and trade. Agricultural activities intensified at that time, amongst others
because of the invention of irrigation farming. The seasonal movements carried
out by members of sedentary populations with part of the herds had probably
gradually evolved into independent groups of mobile stock keepers. Pastoralism
must have been crucial to sustain increasing populations in areas where agriculture
had reached its maximal potential.
From the Chalcolithic, domestic animals would also have been used on a larger scale
for secondary products. With the domestication of the donkey around 3500 BC,
the use of animals for power probably became important, especially in contexts of
trade and exchange. Presumably, milk products had also gradually become a more
substantial part of the diet.
Pastoral production in the Near East was and is more oriented on an outside market
than in Africa. Commercial activities of pastoral nomads probably rose and
declined together with cities and states.
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15. 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1000
BC AD
West Africa
Near East
By the end of the fourth millennium BC, the one-humped camel was domesticated on
the Arabian Peninsula. Bone remains testify that it had found its way to Western
Africa by the early second millennium AD. The animal allowed pastoral nomads to
exploit more arid environments.
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16. 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1000
BC AD
1 2
Late Stone Age Iron Age
West Africa
1. General economies - mobile stock keepers
2. Specialisation - Exchange relations
1 2
Near East Later Neolithic Chalcolithic
Summarising, there thus seem to have been two phases in the development of pastoral
economies in West Africa as well as in the Near East. In the first phase mobile stock
keeping groups were already present, but economies were general. During the second
phase specialised economies emerged, under the influence of an intensification of
farming activities. Exchange relations in the second phase allowed the stock keepers
to increase mobility. Anthropologists would rather reserve the term nomadic
pastoralism for the second phase, while archaeologists use it already for the first stage.
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17. Characteristics of contemporary pastoral groups
High degree of dependence on livestock
In environments unsuited for farming based subsistence
High degree of mobility
Milk products important part of animal food consumed
Diet composed mainly of cultivated crops
-> Often obtained through exchange with farmers
-> Relationships with farming neighbours necessary?
Do not project present forms of pastoralism
uncritically into the past
1. For recent periods, nomadic pastoralism thus usually refers to specialist groups. They all depend
much on livestock, but the animal species they keep are variable according to the region. In Africa,
pastoralists are mainly associated with zebu or humped cattle, while in the Near East, they typically
keep sheep and goat.
Pastoralists can usually be found in marginal environments, where an agriculture based subsistence is
not possible. Their high dependence on livestock usually results in high mobility.
Ethnographical data indicate that pastoralists consume the yields of their herds, mainly milk, rather than
the animals themselves. Milk productivity is in the first place dependent on rainfall. This is usually low
in West Africa and the region has moreover only one yearly rainy season. Eastern Africa, on the other
hand, has two rainy seasons, resulting in much higher milk yields. Such differences can help to explain
the large variability of pastoral economies.
Ethnographic sources also indicate that a high dependence on livestock does not equal a high dietary
importance of animal food. On the contrary, plant food is quantitatively usually the most important
element of pastoral diets. Pastoralists generally obtain that plant food through exchange/trade with
farmers. In most literature on pastoralists, the necessity of exchange relations between pastoralists and
their settled neighbours is regarded as a fundamental element.
In my talk I have mainly emphasised the economic sides of nomadic pastoralism, but the high cultural
value often attached to pastoralism is striking. A human group may still consider itself pastoral, even
though it had to turn to other economic activities out of necessity.
2. The present form of nomadic pastoralism is probably the end-result of gradual specialisation thanks
to factors that appeared in the course of time. It can therefore not projected into the past uncritically.
When calling early Saharan stock keepers pastoral, for example, it should be remembered that they did
not have zebu type cattle, nor did they have farming neighbours to exchange products with.
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